1 s2.0 S0378216613000799 Main

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Journal of Pragmatics 51 (2013) 47--67

www.elsevier.com/locate/pragma
Just click Like: Computer-mediated responses to Spanish

compliments
Carmen Maz-Arvalo *
Universidad Complutense de Madrid, Facultad de Filologa, Departamento de Filologa Inglesa I,
Ciudad Universitaria s/n, 28040 Madrid, Spain
Received 22 November 2012; received in revised form 5 March 2013; accepted 7 March 2013
Abstract
Research on compliments has demonstrated that responding to compliments is far from easy since it entails a clash between the
politeness maxims of agreement and modesty. The question that arises is what happens when communication does not take place faceto-face but is computer-mediated and the contextual conditions are markedly different. The aim of this paper is to answer this question by
analyzing computer-mediated responses to compliments in Spanish as opposed to their face-to-face counterparts. It is hypothesized that
the different contextual conditions will have a core role to play in how interlocutors respond to compliments in computer-mediated
communication, more concretely in a social network like Facebook, where compliments are pervasive. Data have been analyzed from a
netnographic and systemic functional approach and supplemented by semi-structured interviews with eight of the participants. Results
show that aspects such as disembodiment, asynchronicity or relative lack of privacy have a crucial say in how online users respond to
compliments; leading both to a simplification of some face-to-face strategies and the amplification of others and resulting in a whole
different system of responses.
2013 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
Keywords: Response to compliments; Computer-mediated communication; Spanish; Facebook; Netnography; Systemic functional grammar
1. Introduction
Research on responses to compliments has demonstrated that compliments do indeed trigger a complete system of
possibilities as far as responses are concerned (Holmes, 1988a,b, 1995; Pomerantz, 1978; Golato, 2002, 2003, 2005;
Maz-Arvalo, 2012, inter alia). As shown by previous studies, responding to compliments is far from easy since it entails a
clash between the politeness maxims of agreement and modesty (Leech, 1983; Maz-Arvalo, 2012; Pomerantz, 1978).
According to the first of these maxims, interlocutors should maximize agreement with one another. In other words, the
speakers initiating remark should be ideally agreed upon by the hearer. However, in an invented exchange like the one
below, any speaker of English (or Spanish for that matter) would consider the hearers response to the previous
compliment highly inappropriate except in certain contexts involving irony, humor, etc.
Speaker: You look lovely today
Hearer: I totally agree with you
This explains the humorous use of this kind of exchanges as illustrated by the following excerpt from the NorthAmerican sit-com The Fresh Prince of Bel Air (quoted in Maz-Arvalo, 2012):
* Tel.: +34 5001506.

E-mail address: cmaizare@filol.ucm.es.
0378-2166/$ -- see front matter 2013 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.pragma.2013.03.003
48
C. Maz-Arvalo / Journal of Pragmatics 51 (2013) 47--67
Speaker: Wow, your eyes are. . .

Hearer: Yes, I know
Although the interlocutor complies with the maxim of agreement, examples like these are pragmatically infelicitous
because the interlocutor is infringing the maxim of modesty. According to this maxim, a speaker should minimize praise of
self. Interlocutors, thus, can be put on the spot when receiving the speakers positive evaluation in the form of a
compliment since they are expected to provide a response but without sounding too immodest. In the case of face-to-face
conversation, the clash between modesty and agreement is usually solved by non-verbal means such as a smile, shrugs
or other explanatory gestures (Maz-Arvalo, 2012).
The question that arises is what happens when communication does not take place face-to-face but is computermediated. In other words, how are interlocutors expected to respond to online compliments given that the contextual
conditions are different from those in face-to-face encounters? The aim of this paper is to answer this research question by
analyzing computer-mediated responses to compliments as opposed to their face-to-face counterparts. In this respect, it
is hypothesized that the different contextual conditions (e.g. asynchronicity, disembodiment, written channel, etc.) will
have a core role to play in how interlocutors respond to compliments in computer-mediated communication, more
specifically in a social networking site like Facebook, where compliments are ubiquitous.
The paper is divided into six parts. Section 2 below briefly reviews the literature on compliment responses. Section 3
focuses on describing the methodology and the data used in the study as well as paying attention to the channel
differences between these exchanges and those taking place face-to-face. The following section discusses results
together with exploring the possible reasons underlying the speakers choice of one type of response instead of another.
Section 5 offers a new, corpus-driven taxonomy of compliment responses. Finally, section 6 concludes and points to
future research.
2. Theoretical background
The fascination stirred up by compliments accounts for the extensive research devoted to this seemingly innocent
speech act. In fact, compliments have been studied from various perspectives and in many different languages aside from
English or in contrast with English such as Italian, Chinese, Japanese, Polish, German, Greek or Spanish, to name but a
few (Barnlund and Akari, 1985; Bruti, 2006; Chen, 1993; Golato, 2005; Herbert, 1989, 1990, 1991; Herbert and Straight,
1989; Holmes, 1988a; Jaworski, 1995; Kerbrat-Orecchioni, 1987; Knapp et al., 1984; Lewandowska-Tomaszczyk, 1989;
Liu, 1995; Lorenzo-Dus, 2001; Maz-Arvalo, 2010, 2012; Manes, 1983; Placencia, 2011; Placencia and Ypez Lasso,
1999; Pomerantz, 1978; Saito and Beeken, 1997; Sifianou, 1992a,b, 2001; Valds and Pino, 1981; Wolfson and Manes,
1980; Wolfson, 1981, 1983; Ylnne-McEwen, 1993; Yu, 2005; Yuan, 2002, among many others).
Research, however, has mainly focused on face-to-face conversation while neglecting other ways of communication
such as computer-mediated exchanges. Likewise, the main interest usually lies in the initiating move of the complimenting
exchange -- i.e. the compliment itself -- and aspects such as its formulaic nature or the network of pragmalinguistic choices
available to the speaker who wishes to positively evaluate the other; that is, to pay a compliment. Comparatively speaking,
responses to compliments have received significantly less attention even if they are also pragmatically mesmerizing and
similarly trigger a complete system of options for the addressee (Holmes, 1995; Pomerantz, 1978; Maz-Arvalo, 2012;
inter alia). As already pointed out, however, these studies have concentrated on responses in face-to-face conversational
exchanges while totally neglecting responses in other contexts such as social networking sites, where compliment
exchanges are pervasive. Drawing on Holmes (1995) and Maz-Arvalos (2012) analysis of compliment responses in
English and Spanish respectively, the present paper aims to delve into computer-mediated compliment responses in
Peninsular Spanish1 to determine whether Internet users simply transfer the face-to-face conversational patterns or use
different ones, given the channel differences. More specifically, the present paper focuses on compliment responses
produced by a community of Spanish Facebook users.
2.1. Towards a taxonomy of compliment responses: English and Spanish face-to-face exchanges
According to Holmes (1995:139 and following), compliment responses in English can be classified into three main groups:
accepting, rejecting or evading the compliment. Holmes subdivides each of these groups into different strategies, as follows:
1
The choice of this variety is due to the fact that the author lives in Spain and her Facebook network of friends mainly consists of speakers of
Peninsular Spanish. The study of other varieties of Spanish is thus beyond the scope of this paper, although it would be an extremely interesting
subject of study for future research.
49
(1)
Accepting the compliment:

Appreciation/agreement token (e.g. yes, thanks)
Agreeing utterance (e.g. I think its lovely too)
Downgrading utterance (e.g. Its not too bad, is it?)
Returning the compliment (e.g. youre looking good too)
(2) Rejecting/deflecting the compliment:
Disagreeing utterance (e.g. Im afraid I dont like it much)
Question accuracy (e.g. Is beautiful the right word?)
Challenge sincerity (e.g. You dont really mean that)
(3) Evade:
Shift credit (e.g. My mother knitted it)
Informative comment (e.g. I bought it at the Vibrant Knits place)
Ignore (e.g. Its time were leaving, isnt it?)
Legitimate evasion (e.g. Sure, sure, now lets talk about serious things, shall we?)
Request reassurance (e.g. Do you really think so?)
In her study on compliment responses in Spanish, Maz-Arvalo (2012) applies this taxonomy to face-to-face
responses to compliments in Spanish with the aim of comparing them to English responses. In this work, the author
analyzes a corpus of fifty naturally elicited audio-recorded conversational exchanges (all of them containing compliments
and their responses) in Peninsular Spanish and contrasts response patterns with the English ones. Her results showed
the following key differences between English and Spanish responses to compliments:
First, Spanish responses in oral encounters tended to be much more elaborated than English ones, often involving more
than one conversational turn.
Secondly, there were responses that did not match any of the categories or subcategories established by Holmes. This
is the case of what Maz-Arvalo (2010, 2012) defines as accept: enhancing.
Third, Holmes taxonomy also failed to account for non-verbal responses like smiles, smirks or shrugs, quite frequent in
Spanish.
According to Maz-Arvalo (2012), these different choices provide a system of compliment responses in Spanish; the
term system being used in the Systemic Functional tradition (Halliday, 1994 and following). Thus, choosing one option is
not only meaningful in itself but also in contrast to what could have been chosen but was not. In Eggins (1994:22) words,
[t]he notion of the semiotic system also gives a powerful way of interpreting language behavior as choice. If
language is a semiotic system, then the process of language use is a process of making meanings by choosing. In
making a choice from a linguistic system, what someone writes or says gets its meaning by being seen (interpreted)
against the background of what could have been meant (said or written) in that context but was not. Through this
distinction we relate what people did do or did say on any particular occasion (their actual linguistic choices) to what
they could have done or could have said (their potential linguistic choices). (Emphasis in the original)
Fig. 1 below sums up the system of compliment responses in Spanish face-to-face exchanges:
appreciation
accept
agreeing
ACCEPTdowngrading
TYPE
enhancing
returning
disagreeing
response
(Face-to-face)
RESPONSE
reject
REJECTquestionning-accuracy
TYPE
challenging-sincerity
shift-credit
informative-comment
evade
EVADEignore
TYPE
legitimate-evasion
request-reassurance
Fig. 1. System of responses to Spanish face-to-face compliments.

Adapted from Maz-Arvalo (2012).
50
Drawing on Maz-Arvalos system of Spanish compliment responses, the present paper intends to determine whether
these patterns are also repeated in computer-mediated exchanges. That is to say; the question to be answered is to what
extent computer users transfer these patterns online; in other words, to what extent the use of a different communicative
channel affects our response to compliments. In order to do so, the system of responses illustrated in Fig. 1 was applied to
a corpus of online data, which was gathered and analyzed as described in the following section.
3. Data and methodology
3.1. Why Facebook?
As already pointed out, the present study intends to understand computer-mediated responses to compliments in
Spanish together with finding out up to what extent these match their face-to-face counterpart. More specifically, the
focus is on responses to compliments in social networking sites like Facebook, where the act of complimenting is
ubiquitous.
The reasons why Facebook has been chosen over other computer-mediated types of communication (e.g. chats,
forums, email, etc.) are manifold. First, compliments can be considered as essentially phatic speech acts; their
primary purpose is usually to grease the social wheels (Wolfson, 1983:89) rather than to inform. As such,
compliments are more likely to be present in social networking sites where the maintenance of social relationships is
their raison dtre. As opposed to other ways of computer-mediated communication like blogs or wikis, whose main
goal is the transaction of information, social networking sites such as the one under scrutiny here abound in casual
chit chatting among the participant members, who communicate solely for the pleasure of establishing or keeping
social rapport. This explains the increasing popularity of social networking sites, which are becoming a central part of
many peoples everyday life. Inspection of the data reveals that complimenting exchanges are indeed ubiquitous in
Facebook.
Secondly, the study of face-to-face compliments reveals that it is a speech act which is quite limited to (close) friends,
relatives and acquaintances (Maz-Arvalo, 2010, 2012) rather than strangers. Since Facebook communities tend to be
integrated by (close) friends, relatives and acquaintances or friends of friends who eventually might become friends,2
complimenting behavior and responses in this context roughly reproduce the social conditions of their face-to-face
counterparts.3
Third, social networking sites like Facebook are a good example of different types of online4 interaction since they
combine both synchronous and asynchronous ways of communication like personal email, micro-blogging,5 forums and
chat-room access. Furthermore, even if images and audio-visual links form part and parcel of everyday social networking
routines, most forms of interaction remain purely textual. This also helps simplify the process of data gathering, which is
much less demanding than in face-to-face research.
3.2. Why Netnography?
With regard to the data itself, the computer-mediated corpus6 consists of 16,291 words, which comprise
137 conversational exchanges, 1004 conversational turns and 177 compliments. In the same spirit of ethnomethodology,
computer-mediated data have been collected and analyzed following the methodology known as Netnography, defined
Quite significantly, all these contacts that make up a Facebook community are loosely described as friends.
In this respect, it could be argued that other ways of computer-mediated communication like the popular YouTube also include compliments.
However, the social conditions are unlike those in Facebook since the compliments are perceived rather as piropos coming from strangers and
the complimentee rarely replies to them. In addition, the main objective of these sites is the transaction of information as opposed to more
interactive and what are being increasingly defined as phatic technologies (Miller, 2008).
4
As pointed out in the literature, this distinction between online and offline interactions is no longer as neat as it used to be. As a result,
Facebook (and other social networking sites like the Spanish Tuenti) are experiencing a current process of hybridization between physical and
virtual interactions (Yus, 2007). Far from being a disadvantage, this hybrid character entails a new perspective between the purely face-to-face
interactions and the purely virtual ones.
5
This is known as the Wall in Facebook, where individual participants of the same group post their opinions and comments for the rest of the
members to read and/or comment in return. Currently, the most popular micro-blog worldwide is probably Twitter.
6
Although other forms of interaction online are possible and closer to face-to-face communication (e.g. via webcams or programs like Skype),
they have not been considered in this particular study for being too similar to face-to-face interaction. All the examples proceed from the most
popular social networking site nowadays (i.e. Facebook). More specifically, the examples quoted originated all in the wall where users share
their comments. More private forms of communication like private emails --also within the same site --have not been quoted to preserve the
users anonymity.
2
3
51
as a participant-observational research based in online fieldwork [that] uses computer-mediated communications as a

source of data to arrive at the ethnographic understanding and representation of a cultural or communal phenomenon
(Kozinets, 2010:60). The choice of this methodology is backed up by its own definition, which comprehensively describes
the present study.
It has already been pointed out that computer-mediated communication offers more advantages regarding data
gathering than face-to-face interaction. In fact, tape (or video) recording, production and painstaking transcription are not
necessary and interaction results in the immediate production of a text file (Mannes and Stewart, 2000:22) even if texts
are then edited for the sake of clarity or to respect the participants anonymity. In this sense, the advice reported by
previous researchers has been followed. It is therefore argued that messages posted on the Internet are public acts,
concluding thus that even if researchers must act cautiously, there is no need to take more than normal precautions (cf.
Paccagnella (1997), quoted in Mannes and Stewart, 2000:46). Kozinets (2010:142) also points out that analysing online
community or culture communications or their archives is not human subjects research if the researcher does not record
the identity of the communicators (emphasis in original).
Hence, in order to preserve anonymity and ensure confidentiality, the present study only quotes textual data
as examples to illustrate the aspects under analysis. All the names or references to participants as well as photographs
or any other identifying devices have been eliminated. With regards to other relevant issues such as age or
vulnerability, it should be pointed out that all the participants are over twenty-five years of age. This has been easily
verified by the fact that all the participants are known offline directly or indirectly (i.e. they are friends of friends).
Vulnerability poses no problems either since we are dealing with research that involves no risk [and focuses on]
activities typical of normal daily behavior and where the research does not involve the collection of identity in
association with response data (Kozinets, 2010:143). Even in this case, however, participants were informed and
their consent informally obtained.
With regards to the data itself, the analysis has been carried out by means of Corpus Tool7. The choice of this tool is
motivated by four reasons. First, it is primarily intended for analyses based on a systemic-functional approach, which is
also the one adopted in the current paper. Secondly, it involves a semi-automatic tagging of the data, which allows a
relatively faster tagging while preserving a more delicate analysis, especially useful for uncertain cases. Third, it provides
the researcher with a complete statistic report of their results. Finally, it allows for the graphic reproduction of the designed
system(s) (see Figs. 1 and 2).
Regarding the analysis of the conversational exchanges, this has also been tackled from the ethnomethodological point of view (i.e. conversation analysis). Hence, each exchange8 is seen as a complete unit integrated
by conversational turns and conversational moves. In Tsuis (1994:7) words, a turn is seen as everything one speaker
says before another speaker begins to speak. In the case of Facebook each turn accounts for the contribution
each user makes and before another users contribution. Even if contributions may occur simultaneously and have
different users responding at the same time, the interface still presents them as differentiated turns within the
conversational flow. As opposed to spoken conversations, there is consequently a lack of overlapping in Facebook
conversations.
Moves, on the other hand, refer to what interlocutors are doing when participating in the conversation. According to
Sinclair and Coulthard (1975) and Tsui (1994), it is possible to distinguish three main types of moves: initiating, responding
and following-up. Whereas the first two are regarded as obligatory, the status of the follow-up is far from clear and has led to
considerable debate (Maz-Arvalo, 2011:687--689), which is beyond the scope of the present paper. Finally, it is also
necessary to mention that conversational moves do not necessarily coincide with conversational turns; that is to say, one turn
may contain more than one move (e.g. responding to a previous initiating move while at the same time initiating a new
adjacency pair). As opposed to face-to-face conversations, in the case of text-based interactions like the ones in Facebook,
there is no real need to fight for the conversational floor, which renders conversational turns more complex and consisting of
more than one move. Taking the last clarifications into account, in the present paper I will be typically focusing on those turns
that include responding moves when the initiating move is a compliment. As already stated, follow-up moves will not be
considered here.
3.3. Interviews
As already pointed out, the approach adopted in the present article can be thus defined as systemic-functional,
netnographic and ethnomethodological. The analysis is unabashedly functional since I believe language to be a matter of
7
Corpus Tool was designed by Mick ODonnell (2007) at the Universidad Autonoma de Madrid and is available (free of charge) at: http://www.
wagsoft.com/CorpusTool/.
8
The exchange has been defined as the minimal interactive unit (Stubbs, 1983:128) and as the basic unit of interaction (Sinclair, 1972:64).
52
choices made by its users (in line with Halliday and followers). Secondly, it makes use of Kozinets framework or
netnographic principles (Kozinets, 2010), including informal semistructured interviews9 with eight of the participants.
The selection of the participants was first based on proximity and availability. In other words, it was essential for them to
live in the same city as the author, which made it easier for the interview to take place face-to-face rather than through a
written means. Written answers collected via emails or chats were avoided since I wanted the interviews to be as
spontaneous as possible and with no edition on the participants part, which might have happened had the interviews
been carried out via email.
Selection was then fine-grained so that the interviewees were a representative sample of the participants (the
Facebook community under study includes fifty-eight participants). The age span ranges from mid-twenties to mid-forties,
which also represents the age span of the corpus under investigation. Four of them were male and four female, so that
both sexes had a balanced representation. Their educational background was also taken into account. Thus, four of the
subjects had a college education (two of them even held a PhD) while the other four subjects had secondary education or
primary studies. Finally, it is worth pointing out that not all the eight interviewees use Facebook with the same frequency,
which also represents the sample, with four of the subjects being particularly active as opposed to the other four, who
consider themselves as less frequent and active users.
The interviews were semi-structured; that is, the questions were aimed at getting responses in five key areas of
interest: frequency of use, motivation for using the social network, level of involvement (i.e. lurking or posting actively),
types of posts (e.g. personal photos, videos, etc.) and ways of behavior especially regarding comments and how to
respond to them. Interviews were audio-recorded and transcribed. For the sake of clarity, the transcription of the excerpts
has been kept as straightforward as possible, especially considering that our main interest lies in the content of the
participants responses and not in other aspects (albeit interesting enough) like intonation or kinesics. For the sake of
space, all the excerpts are reproduced just in their English translation.
3.4. Face-to-face versus Facebook complimenting exchanges: departing remarks
As pointed out by Yus (2011:127), it is undeniable that interactions on SNSs [social networking sites] differ from the
ones in physical contexts. In this section, I will concentrate on those differences that can be observed at first sight. Data
inspection in the following section will reveal whether or not these differences affect the way Facebook users respond to
compliments.
On the whole, the most significant differences between Facebook and face-to-face conversational exchanges
(especially in the case of complimenting adjacency pairs10) seem to be as follows:
Disembodiment: face-to-face conversational exchanges involve not only the language interlocutors produce but also
their non-verbal, body language such as gestures or facial expressions. Thus, compliment responses in face-to-face
exchanges can be non-verbal, a mere smile of acceptance or appreciation. Sitting in front of our screen (obviously
without the use of a web cam) disembodies us for our interlocutors, who cannot physically see whether we are smiling,
laughing, or making any other kind of gestures while typing (or reading) our messages. The lack of non-verbal behavior,
however, is not as extreme as the preceding sentences might lead us to believe. In fact, it is well known that computer
users connote their written text with non-verbal information via other resources like emoticons11 or oralization strategies
like capitalization, repetition of characters, exclamation marks, etc. The main difference with non-verbal information in
face-to-face exchanges is that, as pointed out by Yus (2011:165) in text-based chat rooms there is no unintentional
nonverbal behavior.
The synchronous/asynchronous dichotomy: face-to-face conversational exchanges are typically synchronous and
conversational turns flow more or less smoothly and in a relatively fast way for most casual conversations, with frequent
overlapping. Facebook exchanges, on the other hand, are not necessarily synchronous (except for certain applications
like its chat). Thus, it is possible to observe conversations that extend for a couple of days; where different interlocutors
post their responses a while after the initiating move was produced. This asynchronicity, however, is increasingly
9
Initially, a questionnaire was also prepared and launched to gather a wider sample of data (both quantitative and qualitative). The application
used for that purpose was the free online Zoomerang. Unfortunately, during this research, Zoomerang was bought by another company and the
process of data collection could not be completed. The use of the questionnaire was finally discarded, although it is the authors intention to launch
an improved version of the questionnaire for future research.
10
The term adjacency pair is used here in the sense of conversational analysis (Sacks, 1995; among many others) as the unit formed by
[initiating move + responding move]. Thus, compliments are typically cases of adjacency pairs, where the initiating move -- i.e. the compliment -- is
expectedly followed by a responding move -- i.e. the response to the compliment.
11
The traditional denomination emoticon -- i.e. emotion plus icon -- is preserved in this paper even if I totally agree with Dresner and Herring
(2010) that it is a misleading term since emoticons are not exclusively used to express emotions.
53
diminishing especially in the case of hyper-connected users who, via their mobile phones, are alerted every time a new
comment (or post) has been added to a conversation where they are participating members (a thread) so that they
immediately post their own response. In cases like this, responses to initiating moves become practically synchronous, in a
chat-like way. To present, asynchrony (even if slight) is still prevalent in applications like Facebooks wall.
Turn-taking and the number of interlocutors: because of space constraints, control over the number of participants in an
on-going face-to-face conversation is fairly straightforward; that is, we know how many people are taking part or could
be eligible to take part in the conversation. This sense of control is completely lost in Facebook semi-public exchanges
(like those on the wall), where a user posts a video, comment, photo, etc. and is uncertain how many users -- if any -- will
respond to this initiating move. Thus, a conversational exchange on Facebook might involve just the first user (who
initiates the conversation) or an indefinite number of users responding and initiating other conversations within the same
exchange or post.12 Still, analysis of the corpus reveals that the most frequent tendency is to have up to five or even six
interlocutors, although this depends on different contextual factors (e.g. the interest of the post itself, the privacy options
selected by the user, the users number of friends, etc.).
The degree of privacy: it is closely related to the previous point in the sense that many comments posted on the users
wall are sensitive to acquire a public nature. In other words, users comments can be shared by other users, thus
allowing more users to read their publications. Moreover, these publications remain registered as opposed to face-toface conversational exchanges, which can also be casually overhead or even registered. However, while this is
customary in social networking sites, it only happens occasionally in face-to-face exchanges.
Hybridity: The language used remains mostly written albeit interactions inside SNSs exhibit a high oral quality (Yus,
2011:118). Thus, users deploy different oralization strategies (e.g. use of capitalization, letter repetitions, creative use of
punctuation marks, emoticons, etc.) which make the message a mixture of typed and oralized text.13 As pointed out by
Yus (2011:163):
[These] are oralized written texts, hybrids of typed texts and the users willingness to hear their own voices while
they are typing their messages. This written voice leads to a textual deformation that aims at transcribing on the
screen the message that the speaker would have said orally in a face-to-face conversation. (Emphasis in the original)
It is beyond the scope of the present paper to delve into the nature of these oralization marks. Their study in depth is
intended for a forthcoming article.
4. Results and data discussion
This section focuses on the analysis of the findings. For the sake of clarity, it has been divided into three subsections, each
of which corresponds with the three main options of the system: accept, reject and evade. Each of the sub-categories in the
network is described and illustrated with examples from the corpus and results are contrasted with their face-to-face
counterparts both quantitatively and qualitatively, paying attention to the main differences found and how these relate to the
differences in channel (face-to-face versus computer-mediated communication) as exposed in section 3.4.
4.1. Accepting the compliment
As already explained in section 2.1, speakers (or Facebook users) responding to compliments have a complex system
of choices at their disposal. One of these options is to accept the compliment, which amounts to 19.7%, an option much
less favored than in the face-to-face corpus, where accepting the compliment accounted for 47% of the cases (MazArvalo, 2012). This already points, as will be shown in the following sections, towards a more simplified system of
responses online (most likely due to the differences discussed in section 3.4) as compared to its face-to-face counterpart,
where users responses can become quite elaborated as a way of keeping the conversational floor, bringing up new
conversational topics, etc. In sum, accepting the compliment opens up a whole network of different strategies. In the
following paragraphs, I will define and exemplify the strategies under the acceptance umbrella.
For the sake of clarity, all the examples appear both in the Spanish original and the English translation. To maintain the
participants anonymity, names have been deleted and they are all referred to as Users (U), followed by a number referring
to their position as interlocutors in that particular conversational exchange. Finally, the (m) or (f) in brackets indicates
whether the participant is male or female. Equivalents to oralization marks like laughter, character repetitions, etc., are
12
One of the most radical examples in the Spanish corpus involves 37 different interlocutors.
Savas (2011) also supports this idea. In fact, some of the informants in her study of chat rooms acknowledged that chatting online was like
talking. While this study does not delve into synchronous chat messages, data also reflect that users opt for a high degree of oralization
strategies.
13
54
also reproduced in the translation. It is also necessary to point out here that those responses combining more than one
strategy have been counted as different responses since interlocutors are, in fact, making different conversational moves
within their conversational turn. The number that precedes each conversational turn refers to its position in the global
corpus. Orthographic and grammatical mistakes have been kept unaltered.
4.1.1. Accept: appreciation
If users choose to accept the compliment, one of the choices they can make is to show signs of appreciation as
illustrated by examples (1) and (2) below:
Example 1: Photograph posted by User 1
479. User 1 (f): De copitas x Menorca
480. User 2 (f): Xxxxx [addressing U1] bonita!!!!. que guapa te veo!!!!
481. U1 (f): muxas gracias carin o!!
Translation:
U1 (f): Wining and dining in Menorca
U2 (f): Cute Xxxxx [addressing U1]!!! How pretty I see you!!!!
U1 (f): Thanx a lot sweetie!!
Example 2: Photo posted by User 2
158. User 1 (f): pero bueno. . .q felinaa!!! guapisimaa!
159. User 2 (f): jajajajaj gracias gracias!!!
Translation:
U1 (f): oh my. . . how feline!!! gorgeouuus!
U2 (f): hahahaha thanks thanks!!!
Thanking the interlocutor for the compliment accounts for 9% of the accepting responses. As shown by the examples,
users simply use the formula thanks (and its variants) or accompany this formula with oralization marks like the
onomatopoeia of laughter, smileys, etc. Occasionally, users are redundant and reduplicate these oralization marks as
shown by example 3 below:
Example 3: User 3 has posted a photograph where she is dressed in a Chinese silky dress. User 4 tries to mimic the
Chinese accent.
198. User 4 (f): hala, lequete espectaculal ests!:)
199. User 3 (f)::) heheh gracias.
Translation:
U4 (f): oh, you look leally spectaculal!:)
U3 (f)::) heheh thanks.
Slightly less often, appreciation is combined with other responses, such as downgrading the compliment or returning it.
In the sections below, each of these strategies will be discussed in more detail.
4.1.2. Accept: agreeing
Users can express their acceptance of the compliment by agreeing with the interlocutor(s) who complimented them, as
in examples (4) and (5):
124. User 6 (f): muuuy tierna la Xxxxxx [in reference to U2] en la foto:)
125. User 2 (f): A m la foto me gusta mucho tambin.
Translation:
U6 (f): veeeery tender the Xxxxx [in reference to U2] in the photo:)
U2 (f): I also like the photo very much.
Inspection of the data reveals that agreeing is not a particularly popular option among Facebook users. In fact, only
2.8% of the sum of responses belongs to this category. One plausible explanation for the low percentage of accept:
agreeing is the already mentioned clash between the maxims of agreeing and modesty when responding to a compliment.
Thus, agreeing with a compliment to oneself can be considered as a lack of modesty. In fact, most cases in the corpus
display a playful character, as shown by examples (6) and (7):
55
Example 6: Photo posted by U3 after a concert with friends. Turns 12 and 13 refer to the lyrics of one of the songs played at
the concert.
12. U2 (m): Con unos an os ms como Barbie ser. . .
13. U3 (m): te dar lo que en la tele no se me ve.
14. U4 (f): Tiene como un aura la foto, no??? y no haba 2 fotos?? jajaja, que pena!! Me perd este momentazo!!
15. U3 (m): claro que tiene aura, estbamos con diosss. Xxxxx nos saco 4, pero esta es la nica en la que conseguimos
mantener los ojos abiertos porque su aura nos cegaba!
Translation:
U2 (m): with a few years more I will be like Barbie. . .
U3 (m): I will give you what you cannot see on tv.
U4 (f): The photo has sort of an aura, doesnt it??? And were there not 2 photos?? Hahaha, what a pity!! I missed this great
moment!!
U3 (m): Of course it has aura, we were with goddd. Xxxxx took 4, but this is the only one where we managed to keep our
eyes open because his aura blinded us!
Example 7: The photo pictures Users 1, 2 and 3. User 2 is the one who uploaded it.
72. User 1 (f): madre mia.no hace de esto ni na. estabamos de buen an o.
73. User 2 (f): jejeje
74. User 3 (f): bien guapas que estamos todas
75. User 2 (f): hombre claro!:)
76. User 4 (f): guapas!
Translation:
U1 (f): oh my God. This so was ages ago. We were soooo fat.
U2 (f): hehehe
U3 (f): we all do look very pretty
U2 (f): of course!:)
U4 (f): pretty girls!
4.1.3. Accept: downgrading the compliment
From a pragmatic point of view, downgrading the compliment is a good balance of the maxims of modesty and
agreement. In fact, the complimentee accepts the compliment (i.e. agrees with the speaker) while minimizing it. Despite
its pragmatic appropriateness, this option accounts for only 2.8% of the sum of responses, mirroring face-to-face
exchanges.
In the following example, user 1 downgrades user 2s compliment by commenting on the fact that she is her mother
and, as a result, will always see her pretty. Her modesty is also revealed by the fact that she provides no response to the
compliments paid by users 3 and 4.14
702. U2 (f): pero que guapisimaaaaaaaaaaaaaa
703. U1 (f): se nota q eres mi madre!!. . .un besote
704. U3 (f): Guapa, pero si estas monisima de la muelte.
705. U4 (f): guapa!!!
Translation:
U2 (f): oh how prettyyyyyyyyyyy
U1 (f): you can tell you are my mother!! a big kiss
U3 (f): pretty, you do look deathly cute
U4 (f): pretty!!!
Example 9 serves to illustrate downgrading in combination with other strategies (see above). In fact, User 2 combines
two types of acceptance; accept: appreciation (graciasssssss, thank you) and accept: downgrading (hace un par de
an itos ya, its a couple of years ago already) whereby she implies that she was younger then and youth has an important
influence in beauty.
14
As will be explained in the following section, a common strategy is to take advantage of the like application in Facebook. This way, users
acknowledge reception of the compliment (and evaluate it positively) while modestly avoiding any other comments.
56

70. User 1 (f): pero qu guapsima ests, prima!
71. User 2 (f): graciasssssssssss, hace un par de an itos ya ehhh, jajajajaja
Translation
U1: How very pretty you look, cousin!
U2: thanksssssssssss, its a couple of years ago already ehhh, hahahahaha
4.1.4. Accept: enhancing the compliment
Contrary to accept: downgrading, this choice violates the maxim of modesty insofar as the complimentee not only
accepts the compliment but maximizes it. Of course, this is always done from a humorous perspective and interpreted as
such by the other interlocutors, as shown in example (10), where User 2 (the recipient of the compliment) enhances the
compliment by admitting it is obvious he is the best. This leads to a sub-topic among the other users, where all of them joke
about it, as all their emoticons and onomatopoeic representations of laughter reveal.
Example 10: Comment posted by User 1 referring to U2.
847. U1 (f): Despus de estar desde anoche con gastroenteritis, solo puedo decir q tengo el mejor enfermero del
mundo. . . Te quiero:)
849. U2 (m): Lo se carin o. Lo se
850. U1 (f): Jajaja!!! Q credo. . .
851. U3 (f): vaya, pobre, espero que ests mejor. . . y s, mi hermanito es un poco credo:)
852. U1 (f): Gracias Xxxxx [addressing U3]. . . Hoy ya un poco mejor, y si muy credo. . . Mucho bla bla pero luego. . . No
veas. . .Se lo curro pobre. . .No veas como me cuido jeje
Translation
U1: After being sick all night with gastroenteritis, I can only say that Ive got the best nurse in the world. . . I love you:)
[addressing U2]
U2: I know honey. I know
U1: hahaha!!! How immodest. . .
U3: oh, dear, poor thing, I hope youre better. . . and yes, my little brother is slightly immodest:)
U1: thanks Xxxxxx [addressing U3]. . . Today Im a bit better, and yes, very immodest. . . Lots of blah blah but later. . . You
cant imagine. . . He worked really hard, the poor thing. . . You cant imagine how well he took care of me hehe
Enhancing is, however, slightly less frequent and accounts for just 2.2% of the sum of responses in the corpus. Its
tongue-in-cheek effect can also be explicitly accompanied by oralization marks like emoticons or laughter
onomatopoeias, which clearly show the speaker is far from being serious, as in example (11) below, where the
whole exchange displays a humorous tone:
Example 11: Comments on a photo posted by user 1 when he was younger. User 1 dares the other users to guess who it
is.
38. U1 (m): Que guapo Quin es??
39. U2 (f): t no
40. U3 (m): Xxxxxxx [addressing someone else]
41. U4 (m): es Xxxxxx [referring to U1]. . .es Xxxxxx quien essssssssss. . .!!!
42. U1 (m): Es el mas guapo de los dos, osea [sic] yo jajajaja
Translation:
U1 (m): How handsome. Who is it?
U2 (f): not you
U3 (m): Xxxxxxx [addressing someone else]
U4 (m): its Xxxxxx [referring to U1]. . .its Xxxxxx, thats whoooooo. . .!!!
U1 (m): its the most handsome of the two, that is me, hahahaha
?
4.1.5. Accept: returning the compliment

Finally, complimentees can also choose to return the compliment and in turn, compliment the speaker (2.7% of the
total) as illustrated by example (12):
Example 12: comment posted by User 1
110. User 1 (f): GRACIAS A TODOS!!! EST CLARO QUE SOIS LA LECHE!! OS QUIERO!!
111. User 2 (m): Est claro que t eres la leche. Por eso te queremos.
57
Translation:
U1 (f): THANKS EVERYBODY!!! ITS EVIDENT YOURE THE TOPS!! I LOVE YOU!!
U2 (m): Its obvious you are the tops. Thats why we love you.
Returning the compliment often co-occurs with accept: appreciation, as illustrated by example (13) below:
Example 13: comment on a photo posted by U1, who talks about her own photo of a tattoo in what looks like a private part
of her body. The artist is User 2, to whom the compliment is addressed.
103. User 1 (f): obra de arte gracias a Xxxx [addresses U2]
104. User 2 (m): Gracias, gracias, pero en este caso lo bonito es el lienzo:D
Translation
U1 (f): work of art thanks to Xxxx [addresses U2]
U2 (m): thanks, thanks, but in this case it is the canvas that is lovely:D
In conclusion, accepting the compliment (especially accept: appreciation) is a less frequent option online than in faceto-face exchanges but still fairly common, especially when contrasted with rejecting and evading the compliment (see
sections 4.2 and 4.3). This is also supported by the interviewees comments, seven of whom explicitly point out that they
usually thank users for their positive comments, either in isolation or in combination with other strategies (see below on
Like) as illustrated by the following excerpts:
I do like replying, apart from clicking on Like, I like replying to comments. [. . .] you may make reference to the
comment itself or say thank you.
I almost always click on Like and then I write well thanks and so on and the name of the person.
Accepting: appreciation certainly seems the most frequently used strategy when users choose to type their response to
compliments, even if there are situations where they cannot keep up with all the positive comments they receive. In cases
like these, they also resort to a general thanks, as commented by subject seven:
I try to respond to everyone always with thank you . . . or with Like but there are times I lose track of them, for
example, on my birthday where I got like more than two hundred people writing, I couldnt, I just responded globally,
on my wall, thanks everybody and so on.
Unfortunately, it is beyond the scope of this paper to pay detailed attention to aspects such as gender differences,
which will be tackled in a future article. However, it is still quite remarkable that accept: enhancing (and its related use of
banter or humor) seems to be an option more favored by male users than their female counterparts as stated by subjects
5 and 7 respectively:
Yes, I usually thank or make some kind of joke, depending on the type of comment I get.
I respond with a little hand [i.e. clicking on Like], or thanking, or following the joke.
Future research will determine whether or not this is a statistically significant difference. By now, suffice it to say that
three out of the four male interviewees make explicit reference to the fact that they often respond to compliments in a
mocking tone. This result is also in line with Maz-Arvalos results of face-to-face responses. As she argues (2012:169):
A remarkable difference, however, is that male speakers can be much more original and less formulaic than their
female counterparts when responding to compliments. [. . .] The [male] complimentee responds by enhancing the
compliment paid to him by more than simply agreeing or accepting.
4.2. Rejecting the compliment
Together with acceptance, the other two choices when responding to a compliment are either to reject or to evade it.
From the pragmatic point of view, rejecting a compliment may seem counterintuitive since nobody is displeased
when positively evaluated. At play, however, is again the maxim of modesty. In the clumsy balance between
modesty and agreement, rejecting a compliment tips the balance in favor of the first. Quite surprisingly, to reject the
compliment amounts to only 1.1% of the sum of responses in the corpus. Even more remarkable, however, is the fact
that in the face-to-face corpus, rejecting a compliment amounts to 24.5% (Maz-Arvalo, 2012). In fact, the most typical
way to reject a compliment in Spanish is disagreeing by means of the formulaic responses qu va! or anda ya (come
on or no way). This type of response has become so formulaic in Spanish that it is no longer perceived by the
!
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interlocutor as a rejection but as a usual way to respond to a compliment without seeming immodest (Maz-Arvalo,
2012).
The reasons underlying this statistically significant difference are threefold. First, the nature of Facebook itself as a
social network advises against disruptive speech acts like rejection, which could be misinterpreted by other users
who are not as close to the interlocutor so as to understand that the comment might be intended as humorous, ironic
or mere banter. Secondly and closely related to the previous reason, interlocutors cannot truly control (as they do in
face-to-face conversational exchanges) how many more users may be seeing their comments, which makes them
more cautious. Finally, the asynchronous character of the channel allows for modesty to be appeased by different
resources like simply not responding to the compliment, something which is unthinkable of in face-to-face
conversational exchanges. One of the interviewees (subject 1) summarizes it rather nicely. Asked why she did not
reject compliments online, as opposed to her face-to-face behavior (where she admitted she did often reject them),
she replied:
To tell the truth, I have never given it a thought. I guess I dont want to sound stroppy, because when you say it faceto-face you always smile or the tone is not that curt as when written. And well, you dont really know who might be
reading your comment, so youd better be discreet (smiles), just in case.
Rejecting a compliment sets up a network of three choices that I will discuss and illustrate in the following paragraphs.
4.2.1. Reject: disagreeing
In this case, the complimentee disagrees with the speaker on the nature of the compliment. After what was mentioned
in the previous paragraphs, it comes as no surprise that there are no examples in the whole corpus. As already discussed,
a social networking site like Facebook is intended to create and maintain social relationships. Its social nature stimulates
agreement and keeps the majority of conversational exchanges within the genre of casual (sometimes merely frivolous)
talk. Disagreement, on the other hand, has the potential of disrupting the interlocutors rapport and can be more often
found in more argumentative genres like the political debate or quarrels.
4.2.2. Reject: question accuracy
The definition is self-explanatory; that is, the complimentee either poses a question about the phrasing of the
compliment or indicates what the interlocutor should have said instead, as in example (14) (part of a longer exchange
about a photograph posted by User 1). Due to the fact that questioning the speaker can be highly face-threatening to them,
this kind of statements is usually accompanied by non-verbal signs marking their humorous tone. Thus, choosing this
option in the system contributes to creating a banter effect among the interlocutors (in a similar way to what accept:
enhancing does) and reinforces the sense of solidarity by following the belief that I can joke with you because our
relationship is far from distant.
Quite curiously, it is again a male user that opts for this humorous kind of response. On the other hand, and because of
the reasons provided at the beginning of the section, making this type of comments can also become pragmatically risky;
which explains why they only account for 0.56% of the cases.
126. U1 (f): Qu joven!
127. U2 (m): Tendras que haber dicho. . .ests igual. . .jejeje
Translation:
U1: How young!
U2: You should have said. . . you look the same. . .hehehe
4.2.3. Reject: challenge sincerity
In these cases, the complimentee challenges the truthfulness of the compliment, considering it as a mere token to
develop a good relationship between the interlocutors but not as a truthful and honest opinion. This is done in a humorous
tone so as not to jeopardize the complimenters face while preserving the complimentees modesty and self-face too.
Example (15) shows this:
158. User 1 (f): pero bueno. . .q felinaa!!! guapisimaa!
159. User 2 (f): jajajajaj gracias gracias!!!
160. User 3 (f): a quin queres seducir con esa mirada!!?
161. User 2 (f): al final me lo voy a creer y todo. . .
59
Translation:
U1 (f): oh dear. . . how felinee!!! beautiful!
U2 (f): hahahaha thanks thanks!!!
U3 (f): who do you wanna seduce with those eyes!!?
U2 (f): Ill finally believe it and all that stuff. . .
As in the case of reject: question accuracy, this option is regarded as pragmatically risky, which explains why it is only
followed in 0.56% of the cases.
4.3. Evading the compliment
Finally, the third macro choice a complimentee can make when verbally replying to a compliment is to evade it. Evading
the compliment accounts for 7.9% of the cases in the corpus as opposed to face-to-face exchanges, where it amounted to
28.5% (Maz-Arvalo, 2012). This difference may be accounted by the fact that, in face-to-face exchanges, compliments
can be more face-threatening for the addressee (as shown by physical responses like blushing) than on-line. The
following paragraphs describe and illustrate the strategies interlocutors use when evading the compliment together with
explaining the striking statistical differences.
4.3.1. Evade: shift credit
In face-to-face encounters, complimentees can also evade a compliment by means of different strategies such as
shifting credit. Although far from regular in the oral corpus, this option consists of pointing to a third person as the source of
credit (e.g. my mother knitted it as a response to what a lovely jumper). Example (16) illustrates a shift of credit from
the complimentee to the photographer, who returns the compliment in turn 157:
Example 16: The photo has been posted by U2 and it is her who appears in it.
155. U1 (f): peaso foto! q guay!!!!!
156. U2 (f): el mrito es de Xxxxxx [referring to U3], que es un artistazo!!!
157. U3 (m): qu guapa ella
Translation:
U1 (f): what a pic! So cool!!!!
U2 (f): the merit is all Xxxxxxs [referring to U3], who is a terrific artist!!!
U3 (m): how pretty she looks
As in face-to-face exchanges, this option is also pretty unusual online and only answers for 1.1% of the cases.
One possible explanation is that users shifting credit online want this particular interlocutor to know about it, and
this can only happen if the interlocutor is also a Facebook user in the same network as the speaker, as in example
(16) above, where User 3 in turn compliments User 2 for her comment. Other cases, however, show that shifting
credit does not necessarily require a user who might see the comment, as in (17) below (already partly quoted as
example 3):
Example 17:
195. User 1 (f): woh!
196. User 2 (f): Q guapa! Precioso el vestido!
197. User 3 (f): Gracias! Y gracias a mi amigo Xxxx [addressing someone else] x elegirlo, un cielo
Translation:
U1 (f): wow!
U2 (f): how pretty! Lovely dress!
U3 (f): thanks! And thanks to my friend Xxxx [addressing someone else] for choosing it, a darling
4.3.2. Evade: informative comment
Rather frequent in spoken encounters, this strategy consists of giving the complimenter some relevant
information about the complimented item (e.g. I bought it in Harrods in response to lovely shirt). Example (18)
reproduces an excerpt of a longer exchange where User 4 (the complimentee and the one who posted the photo)
responds to the compliment by informing the different interlocutors of his age when this photo was taken (he is 35
now):
60
Exchange 18:
180. U1 (f): Guapooooooooooooo, divino, hermoso!!!
181. U2 (m): si teniamos pelo hasta en las cejas. . .y ese tup tan divino!!!!!!!!!!
182. U3 (f): Xxxxx [addressing U4] no me hagas esto!!! Sabes que estaba loquita por tus huesos en aquella poca!!
Quieres jugar a la ruleta de fortuna??? jajajaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa besos mil!!!
183. U4 (m): 19 an itos
Translation:
U1 (f): handsomeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee, divine, beautiful!!!
U2 (m): we had hair even in our eyebrows. . . and that divine forelock!!!!!!!!
U3 (f): Xxxxx [addressing U4] dont do this to me!!! You know I was madly in love with you at that time!! Do you want to play
wheel of fortune???
Hahahahahahaha thousand kisses!!!
U4 (m): just 19 years
As in the previous case, this strategy is rarely used online, where it only amounts to 1.2% of the cases. One of the
reasons for the contrast between online and face-to-face responses seems to be the nature of the complimented tokens.
In face-to-face encounters evade: informative comment is usually reserved to new complimented possessions whereby
complimentees inform their interlocutor of the place where they got that new possession. In online compliments, however,
rarely are new possessions complimented. Instead, the focus is primarily on the persons themselves and their physical
appearance, rather than their possessions. This is clearly a result of the disembodiment present in Facebook, where
interlocutors do not necessarily share a day-a-day face-to-face reality, where new items are likely to be noticed by other
interlocutors. Hence, when informative comments take place, they are usually there to clarify things like the age the user
was when s/he posted the photo or the situation where the photo was taken.
4.3.3. Evade: ignore
Interlocutors choosing this strategy ignore the compliment by keeping to the main topic (if the compliment is an aside
thought), going back to a previous topic or introducing a new one. In other words, no response is provided in this respect.
This, however, should not be confused with not responding verbally to the compliment, which has different implications.
Inspection of the data reveals that this is a frequent case when compliments are linked to appreciations for a previous
service rendered by the complimentee, such as an invitation to lunch. Slightly more frequent than the previous two
cases, evade: ignore accounts for 5.6% of the corpus responses. Example (19) serves to illustrate this sub-category:
Example 19: User 1 has posted a photo showing a common invitation to lunch; the guests all thank and compliment
User 1, who ignores the compliments but shows she is following the conversational thread since she replies to all the
comments:
586. U1 (f): Piscinita y paella!!!
587. U2 (m): Ayyy r bueno!,un besote a los 4,ja,ja,ja!
588. U1 (f): Un besazo amor!!!!k
589. U3 (m): Que suerte cabrones!!
590. U1 (f): Xxxxxxxx [addressing U3]!!!!! Cuando libras????
591. U3 (m): Man ana y pasao!!!!!
592. U4 (m): Xxxxx [addressing U2] cuando quieras t unes!!!! Xxxxxxx man ana tengo medico,cuando salga te llamo!
593. U5 (m): Buena man ana con buena compan a. Gracias chicos!
594. U1 (f): Cuando quieras repetimos!!!!
595. U5 (m): Eso seguro!
Translation:
U1 (f): Swimming pool and paella!!!
U2 (m): Awww how good! A big kiss to the 4 of you, ha,ha,ha!
U1 (f): A big kiss love!!!!k
U3 (m): How lucky, you bastards!!
U1 (f): Xxxxxxxx [addressing U3]!!!!! When are you free????
U3 (m): Tomorrow and the day after!!!!!
U4 (m): Xxxxx [addressing U2] you can join us whenever you want!!!!
Xxxxxxxx [addressing U3] tomorrow Ive got a doctors appointment, when I
am out, Ill call you!
U5 (m): Good morning in good company. Thank you guys!
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U1 (f): We can repeat it whenever you want!!!!

U5 (m): Thats for sure!
Modesty also seems to be a good reason for choosing this option. In example (20), a mother (User 5) who has posted a
very cute photo of her baby lying on a big bed is extremely complimented for the babys looks. She ignores the
compliments, what may be interpreted as a sign of modesty:
Example 20
144. User 1 (f): ah! pero que comodidad!!
145. User 2 (f): Aaaaay que me la comoooooooooo
146. User 3 (f): wow esta nin a est enorme!
147. User 4 (f): como se parece al padre no?
148. User 5 (f): Jaja, cada vez mas
149. User 6 (m): Qu ta, con cama king size!.
150. User 7 (f): Y como siga a ese ritmo, en dos semanas est durmiendo
en la de sus padres. . .
151. User 8 (m):
Yuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuhuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuu
152. User 9 (f): . . .Y eso que me dijiste una vez que estaba justita de peso la nin a, jejejeje. . .te lo tomaste muy a
pecho. . .est linda!!.
153. User 5 (f): ya, luego cogio carrerilla, jajaja. de todas formas hace un mes estaba en la media normal, yo creo que la
foto engan a un poco
Translation:
U1 (f): aw! How comfortable!!
U2 (f): Aaaaaw Im going to eat herrrrrrrrr
U3 (f): wow this kid is enormous!
U4 (f): she looks a lot like her dad, doesnt she?
U5 (f): haha, more and more
U6 (m): How cool, with a king size bed!.
U7 (f): And if she keeps growing up, in two weeks shell be sleeping in her parents
U8(m):
Yuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuhuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuu
U9 (f): . . .And you said once she was just below her weight, hehehehe. . .you took it real serious. . . shes gorgeous!!.
U5 (f): yes, she took a run-up, hahaha. Anyway last month her weight was average, I think the photo is a bit misleading.
!
4.3.4. Evade: legitimate evasion

By means of this strategy, speakers play down the importance of the compliment by explicitly indicating either the need
to return to the first main topic if the compliment was uttered as a side thought (e.g. ok, lets turn to the main topic here).
This option is thus pretty similar to evade: ignore with the main difference that in this case, the speaker explicitly requests
to go back to the main conversational topic while in evade: ignore, speakers stick to the main topic while totally overlooking
the compliment as if it had never taken place. Once again, evasion seems closely linked to the modesty maxim. Quite
significantly, there are no examples of evade: legitimate evasion in the corpus. It is difficult to determine whether this
absence is really significant or simply due to the nature of the corpus. However, it could also be argued that those
exchanges where compliments take place are usually mono-topical and thus do not easily allow for a return to an initial
topic, as is the case in face-to-face encounters. In other words, when users post a photograph and other users compliment
it, the main topic is exactly the new photograph, which rends it quite difficult for the complimentee to go back to the original
topic since the original topic is exactly the compliment.
4.3.5. Evade: request reassurance
Most frequently, speakers request reassurance of the compliment when they suspect the compliment might be too
generously paid or when they are genuinely unsure of their worth (e.g. do you really think so?). Once again, there
are no examples in the present corpus. It is far from easy to determine whether or not this is due to the nature of the
corpus, as opposed to face-to-face encounters, where it is rare but occurs occasionally. The main reason that might
account for this lack of examples online was provided by users themselves. In fact, users who upload a photograph
admit that they are usually proud of it (and of how they look in it), this being the main reason why they upload it in the
62
first place. As an example, this is what three of the interviewees replied when asked what photographs they chose to
share:
Subject 1:
Well, I usually upload those photos where I look pretty, haha. Im not going to upload one where I look ugly, am I?
Ive got my friends to do that, hahaha.
Subject 2:
I upload photos where I like the way I look, for me it is like being on display and I want people to like what they see.
Subject 5:
To tell the truth I had never thought about it but I guess I upload photos I like and which I think my friends might also
like.
In the case of face-to-face encounters, Maz-Arvalo (2012:11--14) mentions examples where complimentees are
genuinely unsure whether or not they are worth the compliment.
As seen throughout the above paragraphs, users who are complimented may choose to respond in various ways.
Some examples, however, show a display of different strategies for responding to the compliments received. This is
clearly illustrated by example (21) below where User 1 employs several strategies for responding to the compliments on
her photograph. Thus, turn 117 shows a complex mixture of appreciation (thanks), downgrading (I think I look like a
happy junkie), and informative (I had just taken a huge 500 tablet). Later on, in turn 120, she resorts to a more
humorous tone by using acceptance: enhancing (I just transmit peace and good vibes. I am like a yoga session. No, I am
not talking about tantric sex.) before finally ending with acceptance: agreeing (I also like the photo very much). This
example is far from the only one where users display quite complicated responses, very much in line with what happens in
face-to-face responses in Spanish (Maz-Arvalo, 2012).
Example 21:
116. User 2 (f): Qu guapa en la foto Xxxxxxx [addressing User 1]!!
117. User 1 (f): Gracias! A m me parece que tengo cara de drogada contenta (y de hecho, tena jaqueca y acababa de
meterme un pastillaco de 500), pero hay a quien le gusta, as que. . .
118. User 3 (f): Mari, aparte de monrrima, que t siempre
119. User 3 (f): con cualquier cosita que te pones (o que te quitas) . . .mirar tu foto es bueno pa la salud, ya que se
requiere hacer el pino y doblar el pescuezo: una asana de yoga. Asaaaaaaaaaaaaanaaa, asaaaaaaaaaaanaaaaaaa. . .
120. User 1 (f): Es que yo transmito paz y buen rollo. Soy como una sesion de yoga. No, no estoy hablando de sexo
tntrico. [. . .]
124. User 6 (f): muuuy tierna la Xxxxxx [addressing User 1] en la foto:)
125. User 1 (f): A m la foto me gusta mucho tambin.
Translation:
U2 (f): How pretty in the photo Xxxxxxx [addressing User 1]!!
U1 (f): Thanks! I think I look like a happy junkie (in fact, I had a headache and had just taken a huge 500 tablet), but there
are others who like it, so. . .
U3 (f): apart from loveliest, you always
U3 (f): anything you wear (or take off) . . . looking at your photo is good for ones health, since its necessary to stand upside
down and bend your neck: a yoga asana. Asaaaaaaaaaaaaaanaaa, asaaaaaaaaaaanaaaaaaaaaaaa. . .
U1 (f): I just transmit peace and good vibes. I am like a yoga session. No, I am not talking about tantric sex.
U6 (f): veeeery tender Xxxxx [addressing User 1] in the photo:)
U2 (f): I also like the photo very much.
!
5. Towards a taxonomy of online compliment responses

Quite surprisingly, the initial (face-to-face) system of responses accounts for less than 29% of the responses in the
online corpus (28.7%). Furthermore, it fails to provide a reason for the pending 71.3% of the cases. This section delves
into the limitations of this system, trying to account for the numerous cases it leaves unexplained. The ultimate aim is to
establish a more comprehensive taxonomy or system of online compliment responses, which indeed reflects what data
show.
63
An important limitation of the initial system for face-to-face responses was the exclusion of non-verbal
responses. It is true that in face-to-face exchanges many non-verbal responses (e.g. blushing, ticks, etc.) are
unintended by the interlocutors producing them and, although communicative in their own right, cannot be really
considered as part of the intended illocutionary force of the response. In contrast, all the responses provided by
Facebook users are intentional and should be analyzed as such. Yus already points at this lack of un-intentionality
in text-based chat rooms, which is also applicable to Facebook conversational threads. In his own words (2011:
165--166),
In text-based chat rooms there is no unintentional nonverbal behavior, that is, information conveyed nonverbally
that the users exude without consciously intending to communicate it, because all written texts involve a willingness
to produce them. (Emphasis in the original)
Hence, the first significant choice the complimentee faces online is actually whether to provide a typed response or not.
This option, however, is not feasible in face-to-face conversations where compliment exchanges are a clear example of
adjacency pairs where the initiating move (the compliment) is expectedly followed by a response. As already pointed out,
this response can also be non verbal (e.g. a smile, a shrug, etc.) but its complete absence is marked in face-to-face
conversational encounters and can be interpreted by the speaker either as a sign of rudeness or as a failure to have
correctly received the initiating move.
In contrast, in the case of online compliments non-response has become quite common, especially in those cases
where users are far from hyper-connected and it might take days for them to check their Facebook comments. Thus, these
comments are likely to be deemed too old to be worth replying to. In fact, this seems to be the excuse given by users
when asked why they have not replied to a comment, especially in the cases of older users. As opposed to their face-toface counterparts, however, the absence of a response in this context is not considered either rude or a communication
failure but rather a natural effect of the asynchronous character of the channel, as illustrated by examples (22) and (23)
below:
Example 22: Photo posted by User 1 where there appear a couple of her relatives. None of the relatives (who also are
Facebook users and who have indeed seen the post, since they were labeled), make any comments.
691. U2 (f): La mejor pareja del mundo!!!!k
692. U3 (f): pero mira qu estn guapos!!!
[End of exchange]
Translation:
691. U2 (f): The best couple in the world!!!!k
692. U3 (f): How attractive they look!!!
Furthermore, when asked whether they were offended by not being responded to, all the interviewees replied that they
were far from being offended when some users did not provide any response. The usual explanation interviewees
offered was related to the asynchronous nature of Facebook, as the following two extracts (subjects 3 and 7 respectively)
show:
I dont get offended although I do know people who have got offended because their sister-in-law hasnt given any
opinion about her photo, or her cousin or someone. [. . .] I personally dont mind. [. . .] I understand there are people
who check Facebook once a month, once a week, once every three months, or once or twenty times a day, but one
knows that.
[. . .] There are people who are not all day checking out Facebook, they are not going to see it, obviously, or when
they have just entered the last minute news, the comment is not there anymore. [. . .] I mean, Im not going to pay
attention to who makes me comments and who doesnt, obviously. [. . .] I also comment sometimes and there are
times when I dont comment anything.
Together with asynchrony, another major reason for not providing a response seems to be modesty. As already
pointed out, responding to compliments can be highly face-threatening for the interlocutors since it entails a clash between
the two maxims of agreement and modesty. While modesty is typically solved off-line by other strategies such as evading
or downgrading the compliment, the online nature of Facebook allows interlocutors to make use of other tactics, such as
not providing any response at all. It is difficult to determine whether the absence of response is due to the low-profile nature
of the interlocutor (that is, they do not connect to Facebook regularly) or to modesty. It could also be due to a combination
of both:
64
Example 23: photo posted by User 1, who does not give any responses, either because she has failed to see the
comments or because it is such a proliferation of compliments that she feels overwhelmed or too modest to answer.
706. U2 (f): guau! qu bellezon
707. U3 (f): guapa. . .valla tela.
708. U4 (f): que guapa!!!
709. U5 (f): Guapa, guapa y guapa!!!
710. U6 (f): guapaaaaa, hoy te hemos hechado [sic] de menos, luego nos vemos
711. U7 (f): Estas ms guapa que nunca, se te nota en la mirada.
Translation:
U2 (f): wow! what a beauty
U3 (f): pretty. . . oh my god.
U4 (f): how pretty!!!
U5 (f): pretty, pretty and pretty!!!
U6 (f) prettyyyyyy, today weve missed you, see you later
U7 (f): you look prettier than ever, your eyes can tell.
The role played by asynchrony and modesty is also commented by the subjects interviewed. Subjects 1 and 2
respectively point out that:
I connect relatively little in comparison with other people. When I see the comments, it is very late to say anything in
response, but I know my contacts know I dont usually look at it [Facebook].
No, I dont usually answer anything, basically because I feel ashamed. Lots of people see it, so I feel ashamed to
respond to compliments, I think it is hardly modest. Sometimes, if I like the comment very very much, I do click on the
Like little hand.
Not responding to compliments accounts for 30% of the cases in the corpus, as opposed to 41.3% of the cases,
where interlocutors choose to respond in what could be defined as an implicit way rather than typing a response. In
other words, implicit responses are those where the complimenter does not provide a written response as the ones
analyzed in section 4 of this paper. Data reveal that, in this case, users can opt for providing a non-verbal response like
smileys and other emoticons, onomatopoeia, etc. or simply click on the Like option provided by Facebook. Example
(24) serves as an illustration, where User 1s response to the different compliments paid is either to like the
compliment (which she does in every single case) or to accompany this like with an emoticon, as can be observed in
turn 736 (in bold):
Example 23: User 1 has posted a photo of her kid
733. U2 (f): kkk
734. U3 (f): Es preciosa!!
735. U4 (f): Man ana me la pienso comer a besos k
736. U1 (f):;))
737. U5 (f): de verdad, no hay otra igual es feliz !!!!!
738. U6 (f): es una preciosidad, pero qu estilo posando:)
739. U7 (f): ESta bellisima!!! muy pero muy grande!!! y que poses por Dios!!!
Translation:
U2 (f): kkk
U3 (f): Shes beautiful!!
U4 (f): Tomorrow Im going to eat her with kisses k
U1 (f):;))
U5 (f): really, there is not another like her, shes happy!!!!!
U6 (f): shes a beauty, what a posing style:)
U7 (f): shes absolutely beautiful!!! very very grown-up!!! and her pose, oh my God!!!
The first of these choices -- i.e. providing a non-verbal response by means of e.g. emoticons -- is relatively uncommon
(only 3% of the examples). In contrast, the second option; that is, clicking on Like, is extremely popular (38.3% of the
cases) as well as extremely convenient from the pragmatic point of view. The complimentee does not waste any time at all
to type an answer while politely acknowledging both the reception and appreciation for the compliment. This is very nicely
pointed out by subject 7:
65
I dont know, well, I think its fine, when there is something you like and if you have the option of saying so its fine.
[. . .] Its very convenient, I click the button quickly so that the person knows I have read it. Many times you dont have
the time to respond to everyone who writes to you and Like is like a compliment, its like I like it, very well.
Male subjects 5 and 8, however, point out to a hidden agenda when using this Like strategy. Thus, subject 5
mentions that he chooses this possibility (Like) when he does not have time to think of a more creative answer:
I click on Like when I dont have any funny comment to make or when I dont have time to think about what to write.
For subject 8, it is a convenient way of acknowledging the reception of the message while keeping a polite (albeit not
necessarily sincere) behavior towards the interlocutor:
I click on Like and thats all, I dont give a damn about Facebook, Facebook is, well, I am not a busybody, and
Facebook is for busybodies, only that, to gossip about this ones profile or that ones profile, see what this one is
doing, see what she is doing. [. . .] I click on Like because I feel obliged to do so, for people to see that I have seen
it.
In sum, data reveal that Facebook users follow the system of face-to-face responses only partially. Typed (or verbal)
responses are far from the favored strategy and, although used in 28.7% of the cases, participants prefer making use of
the tools provided by the application (i.e. the like sign) or just leave compliments unanswered, taking advantage of the
social networking sites asynchronous nature. This leads to a re-structuration of the whole system online where both
simplification (as far as verbal responses are concerned) and amplification (as far as other strategies are concerned) coexist. This new system is illustrated in Fig. 2.
appreciation
accept
agreeing
ACCEPTdowngrading
TYPE
enhancing
returning
EXPLICITquestionning-accuracy
(WRITTEN)-RESPONSE reject REJECTTYPE
challenging-sincerity
response
evade
shift-credit
EVADEinformative-comment
TYPE
ignore
use-of-emoticons
IMPLICITRESPONSE use-of-the-"like"-application
NOno-response-is-provided
RESPONSE
Fig. 2. System of online Spanish response to compliments.
6. Conclusions
This paper intended to find out to what extent the users of social networking sites like Facebook transfer the patterns of
face-to-face exchanges when interacting online. More specifically, the analysis has focused on responses to compliments
online as opposed to their face-to-face counterparts. Results show that aspects such as disembodiment, asynchronicity
or relative lack of privacy have a crucial say in how interlocutors respond to compliments; leading both to a simplification of
some strategies and the amplification of others and resulting in a different system of responses.
Some limitations to the study have to be acknowledged, however. Variables such as gender or age seem to play a core
role in how social networking site users respond to compliments. As was pointed out, it was beyond the scope of this paper
to pay full attention to the influence of such complex variables. Given their complexity they have not been studied in depth
here. Far from being neglected, these aspects will be addressed in future analyses so as to gain a better understanding of
social interaction in this relatively new but thriving scene (i.e. social networking sites).
Finally, the oralization marks present in such a hybrid communicative means like Facebook or the contrast between
Spanish and other languages like English (or other Spanish varieties) are other aspects worth considering in future
research.
66
Acknowledgments
I would like to thank all the participants who have made this study possible. My special thanks go to the eight
participants who agreed to be interviewed and whose comments shed light on the results. Also, I would like to
acknowledge that this research was financially supported by a grant from the Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation
(ID No: FFI2009-7308). This paper is part of a long-term research project: Functions of Discourse: Evaluations in Text
Types. Of course, all mistakes remain exclusively mine.
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Carmen Maz-Arvalo obtained her PhD in English Linguistics in 2001, being an English teacher since 1995. Currently Dr. Maz-Arvalo holds
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the secretary of the Revista de Estudios Ingleses, published yearly by the Universidad Complutense de Madrid.

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Journal of Pragmatics 51 (2013) 47--67

Just click Like: Computer-mediated responses to Spanish

* Tel.: +34 5001506.

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Speaker: Wow, your eyes are. . .

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Accepting the compliment:

Fig. 1. System of responses to Spanish face-to-face compliments.

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as a participant-observational research based in online fieldwork [that] uses computer-mediated communications as a

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Example 9: Photo posted by User 2

4.1.5. Accept: returning the compliment

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U1 (f): We can repeat it whenever you want!!!!

4.3.4. Evade: legitimate evasion

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5. Towards a taxonomy of online compliment responses

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